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Before landing his dream job, the sportswear brand EVP was sleeping in his car and other places.
He holds one of the top roles at the top sportswear brand in the world. But, there was a time when this Nike exec was barely making ends meet.
Before starting his 18-plus-year tenure at the company, EVP and Chief Communication Officer Kejuan Wilkins shared his story while giving the commencement speech at the University of Michigan’s School of Kinesiology.
The Michigan native told the graduates about how he was hired as an intern for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers shortly after he graduated the university and drove down to Florida with $40 in his sister’s 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass with damaged doors back in 1998.
I learned over time that each experience—positive or negative—is a step toward achieving your goal.
KeJuan Wilkins
“I ended up sleeping a lot of nights in my that sad little beater car,” Wilkins recalled of his post-graduate life trying to follow his passion of having a career in sports. He added that he would also spend nights sleeping in the trailers the franchise kept for the media team and on chairs in the players’ lounge. “I lived on the leftover team food that Coach Dungy encouraged me to take home. Eventually, the person who was responsible for helping new players on the team get settled into the city found out I didn’t have a home.”
The Bucs eventually assisted in helping Wilkins find an apartment without having to pay a security deposit for $425 a month, but his intern stipend was only $400 a month, which caused him to live well beyond his means.
“Between the overdue rent, the always-empty gas tank, the homesickness, the homelessness, and the disappointing Bucs season, life was nothing like I’d pictured,” he told the graduates.
Still, Wilkins was able to persevere, learn from those hard times, and find his way to more meaningful jobs in the industry. After quitting the Bucs, he found his way to the Detroit Lions, Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks before finally landing at Nike.
“I learned over time that each experience—positive or negative—is a step toward achieving your goal,” Wilkins told the graduates. “So, I continued to learn, fail, and grow—and today I have a dream job at Nike that I never could have imagined for myself when I was starting out.”
